Publications

Although the linear-in-means model is the workhorse model in empirical work on peer effects, its theoretical properties are understudied. In this study, we develop a social-norm model that provides a microfoundation of the linear-in-means model and investigate its properties. We show that individual outcomes may increase, decrease, or vary non-monotonically with the taste for conformity. Equilibria are usually ineffcient and, to restore the rst best, the planner needs to subsidize (tax) agents whose neighbors make efforts above (below) the social norms. Thus, giving more subsidies to more central agents is not necessarily effcient. We also discuss the policy implications of our model in terms of education and crime.

We had studied the influence of physical fatigue induced by 5 min Harvard step test onto the strength of well-known visual illusions - Müller-Lyer and Ponzo. The responses of the volunteers were registered either in visual or in sensorimotor domain. The results did not show any significant changes in illusion’s strength and speed of hand movements on the stimuli shafts between control and experimental group. Thus we propose that the dependence of the illusion’s strength on the physical load or stress reported in some works is due to experimental design but not to the physical load by itself.

Positive mental health is considered to be a significant predictor of health and longevity; however, our understanding of the ways in which this important characteristic is represented in users’ behavior on social networking sites is limited. The goal of this study was to explore associations between positive mental health and language used in online communication in a large sample of Russian Facebook users. The five-item World Health Organization Well-Being Index (WHO-5) was used as a self-report measure of well-being. Morphological, sentiment, and semantic analyses were performed for linguistic data. The total of 6,724 participants completed the questionnaire and linguistic data were available for 1,972. Participants’ mean age was 45.7 years (SD = 11.6 years); 73.4% were female. The dataset included 15,281 posts, with an average of 7.67 (SD = 5.69) posts per participant. Mean WHO-5 score was 60.0 (SD = 19.1), with female participants exhibiting lower scores. Use of negative sentiment words and impersonal predicates (“should statements”) demonstrated an inverse association with the WHO-5 scores. No significant correlation was found between the use of positive sentiment words and the WHO-5 scores. This study expands current understanding of the association between positive mental health and language use in online communication by employing data from a non-Western sample.

Exposure to violence has been shown to negatively affect mental health and well-being. The goal of this Facebook-based study was to describe the rates of exposure to violence in a sample of Russian adults and to assess the impact of these experiences on subjective well-being and victimization-related psychological distress. Three types of victimization were assessed: physical assault by a stranger, physical assault by someone known to victim, and nonconsensual sexual experiences. The 5-item World Health Organization Well-Being Index (WHO-5) was used to assess subjective well-being, and Primary Care PTSD Screen (PC-PTSD) was employed as an indicator of victimization-related psychological distress. Data were obtained from 6,724 Russian-speaking Facebook users. Significant levels of lifetime victimization were reported by the study participants. Lifetime physical assault by a stranger, physical assault by someone known to victim, and sexual assault were reported by 56.9%, 64.2%, and 54.1% of respondents, respectively. Respondents exposed to violence were more likely to report posttraumatic stress symptoms and lower levels of subjective well-being. Participants who were exposed to at least one type of violence were more likely to experience symptoms of traumatic stress (U = 1,794,250.50, p < .001, d = 0.35). Exposure to multiple forms of violence was associated with more severe traumatic stress symptoms (rs = .257, p < .001). Well-being scores were significantly lower among participants exposed to violence (t = 8.37, p < .001, d = 0.31). The study demonstrated that violence exposure is associated with reduced well-being among Russian adults. Our findings highlight the negative impact of violence exposure on subjective well-being and underscore the necessity to develop programs addressing violence exposure in Russian populations.

The article is dedicated to the analysis of the concept of presence in the philosophical and non-philosophical texts of the 18th century. This concept is the meeting ground of two semantic fields. On the one hand, the word присутствие ‘presence’ is derived from the Old Church Slavic present-tense participle сы, сѫшти “existing, being’, and signifies God’s presence in the Holy Gifts. On the other hand, присутствие, according to the Russian Academy Dictionary, refers to ‘being jointly at one place’ and ‘сourt sitting’. In addition, one finds a philosophical use of this term, where it is associated with the presence of an object in consciousness (for example, in Descartes, Hume, Locke) as well as with the presence (actual or imaginary) of a person (Adam Smith). Due both to Radischev’s philosophical interests and to biographical circumstances, his works provide abundant material for analyzing the topoi of presence and absence in their different meanings. 

Fear of stars was frequently expressed at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. It was rooted both in apocalyptic fears and in the rejection of modern cosmology current at that time. Besides, morbid fears, of great interest to the contemporary psychiatry, included the so-called “astraphobia”, fear of lightning, gradually re-interpreted as fear of stars, which contributed to the attention to the topic. All of these contexts have to be taken into account when commenting on Andrej Belyj’s “Sphynx” (1905) and “Second Symphony (Dramatical)” (1902).

One of the key themes in the theoretical debate about the causes of radicalization is its relationship to inequality. Researchers consider the connection of radicalization both with objective inequality, which refers to structural restrictions in the access of certain social groups to economic, political and cultural resources, and subjective inequality, that is, the unfair distribution of these resources in the perception of community members.

Based on 21 semi-structured in-depth interviews with young people from the North Caucasus, the article explores the meanings attributed to Islamist radicalization and the relationship of radicalization to various dimensions and understandings of inequality. The authors conclude that religious radicalization within the North Caucasus region is linked in narratives to perceived injustice and is seen by informants as a cumulative response to the oppression of religious youth as a result of counter-terrorism measures. The radicalization of North Caucasian youth with experience of migration outside the region is linked to horizontal inequalities and is interpreted as a reaction to a situation of double exclusion - on the part of a society where social elevators are blocked by ethnic and religious xenophobia, and on the part of a parent family that seeks to control its younger members and imposes its own notions of self-realization and career.

The goal of this paper is to compare a state of venture capital market in China and Japan. Both countries have faced an outstanding increase in volume of venture financing in recent years. Although the emergence of VC in these countries was forced by state reforms, instruments of government innovation policies are found to be different due to the unique features of their institutional development. For the purpose of the study, we conducted a comparative analysis of drivers of venture capital growth seen in China, a closed economic system with high level of government regulation, and Japan, an example of open market economy. Among venture capital drivers observed in the countries, entrepreneurial base, financial markets development, regulation of foreign investments and support of private business sector are found to be of a high significance. Moreover, structure and heterogeneity of investors positively affect venture growth as it provides a more diversified pool of capital. The exit stage of a deal is to be of an extreme importance for venture capitalists, that is why government actions towards an opening of new exit ways, including creation of alternative stock exchanges and easing of M&A regulation, cause booms on VC market. The declarative manner of innovation programs in China makes public funds the main player on the market, which flow budget capital to large-scale projects. On the other hand, Japanese government prefers to act as an intermediary between private investors and start-ups. Our findings illustrate how institutional factors affect an efficiency of government support, which provides valuable inputs for practitioners and policymakers.

We provide a bare-bones framework that uncovers the circumstances which lead either to the emergence of equally-spaced and equally-sized central places or to a hierarchy of central places. We show how these patterns re‡ect the preferences of agents and the e¢ ciency of trans- portation and communication technologies. With one population of homogeneous individuals, the economy is characterized by a uniform distribution or by a periodic distribution of central places having the same size. The interaction between two distinct populations may give rise to a hierarchy of central places with one or several primate cities

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to discover and explain the dark side of expatriate-HCN relationships by determining what, how and why causes their inability to develop quality relationships with each other and with what consequences.

Design & Methodology: To address the purpose we conducted semi-structured interviews (N=30) with both expatriates and HCNs, focusing on disruptive relationship behaviors they exhibit towards each other, factors preceding them (antecedents), mechanisms through which they affect them and the consequences thereof.

Findings: Our findings show that relational dysfunction emanates from multilevel differences between expatriates and HCNs, inducing workplace conflicts. These conflicts increase relational (emotional, social, instrumental and opportunity) costs that render both dyadic groups to evaluate their relationship and socially categorize each other negatively, thus, detaching from the relationship. This detachment then induces disruptive relational behaviors that amplify the stated conflicts and detachment dynamics, ultimately resulting in relational breakdown.

Research limitations / implications: This study possesses methodological (data collection, analysis) and conceptual (high degree of comprehensiveness) limitations. However, these deliver implications for further research as they open a multitude of promising research avenues that could polish our model.

Originality/Value: This is the first study we are aware of that focuses on discovering and explaining the entire nomological network of the dark side of expatriate-HCN relationships phenomenon and that uses the Interdependence Theory in cross-cultural relational settings. As such, it is the pioneering work that delivers theoretical and empirical contributions and fosters further research efforts.

Keywords: Expatriates, HCNs, Relationships, Dark Side

Paper type: Research Paper

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to discover and explain the dark side of expatriate-HCN relationships by determining what, how and why causes their inability to develop quality relationships with each other and with what consequences.

Design & Methodology: To address the purpose we conducted semi-structured interviews (N=30) with both expatriates and HCNs, focusing on disruptive relationship behaviors they exhibit towards each other, factors preceding them (antecedents), mechanisms through which they affect them and the consequences thereof.

Findings: Our findings show that relational dysfunction emanates from multilevel differences between expatriates and HCNs, inducing workplace conflicts. These conflicts increase relational (emotional, social, instrumental and opportunity) costs that render both dyadic groups to evaluate their relationship and socially categorize each other negatively, thus, detaching from the relationship. This detachment then induces disruptive relational behaviors that amplify the stated conflicts and detachment dynamics, ultimately resulting in relational breakdown.

Research limitations / implications: This study possesses methodological (data collection, analysis) and conceptual (high degree of comprehensiveness) limitations. However, these deliver implications for further research as they open a multitude of promising research avenues that could polish our model.

Originality/Value: This is the first study we are aware of that focuses on discovering and explaining the entire nomological network of the dark side of expatriate-HCN relationships phenomenon and that uses the Interdependence Theory in cross-cultural relational settings. As such, it is the pioneering work that delivers theoretical and empirical contributions and fosters further research efforts.

Digital technologies provide new possibilities for studying cultural heritage. Thus, literature research involving large text corpora allows to set and solve theoretical problems which previously had no prospects for their decision. For example, it has become possible to model the literary system for some defi-nite literary period (i.e., for the Silver Age of Russian literature) and to classify prose writers according to their stylistic features. And more than that, it allows to solve more general theoretical problems. The given research was conducted on Russian literary texts of the early 20th century. The sample included 100 short stories by 100 different writers. The measurements were carried out for 5 syntactic variables. For each of these distributions, the most popular statistics were calculated. Basing on these data, we consider empirical verification of Lyapunov's central limit theorem (CLT). The article validates the effectiveness of CLT theorem and the conditions for its implementation. Besides the normal (Gaussian) function we used another analytical model — the Hausstein func-tion. It turned out that both theoretical distributions for each of five variables do not contradict the experimental data. However, the alternative analytical model (Hausstein function) has shown even better agreement with the experimental data. The obtained results may be used in computational linguistic studies and for research of Russian literary heritage.

Information from users’ profiles on social networking sites is an important data source for analysis of the users’ psychological characteristics. Texts, video and audio files, images, public pages can be easily accessible and analyzed. We consider the ways of estimating the users’ psychological characteristics on the base of his or her profile in the social network VKontakte. We compare different machine learning models for the analysis of user's texts, such as linear regression, decision trees, random forest, support vector machine with linear, radial and sigmoidal kernels. Also we discussed the possible further stages of research including the sentiment analysis for better text description, the analysis of profile photo, and, finally, ways of combining all steps for estimating psychological characteristics of social networks users.

We investigate whether plants inside and outside geographic clusters differ in their resilience to adverse economic shocks. To this end, we develop a bottom-up procedure to delimit clusters using Canadian geo-coded plant-level data. Focusing on the textile and clothing (T&C) sector and exploiting the series of dramatic changes faced by that sector between 2001 and 2013, we find little evidence that plants in T&C clusters are more resilient than plants outside clusters. Over the whole period, plants inside clusters are neither less likely to die nor more likely to adapt by switching their main line of business. However, in the industries the most exposed to the surge of Chinese imports after 2005, plants inside clusters die and exit less than others in the following 2 years.

Paralinguistic phenomena are non-verbal elements in conversation. Paralinguistic studies are usually based on audio or video recordings of spoken communication. In this article, we will show what kind of audible paralinguistic information may be obtained from the ORD speech corpus of everyday Russian discourse containing long-term audio recordings of conversations made in natural circumstances. This linguistic resource provides rich authentic data for studying the diversity of audible paralinguistic phenomena. The frequency of paralinguistic phenomena in everyday conversations has been calculated on the base of the annotated subcorpus of 187,600 tokens. The most frequent paralinguistic phenomena turned out to be: laughter, inhalation noise, cough, e-like and m-like vocalizations, tongue clicking, and the variety of unclassified nonverbal sounds (calls, exclamations, imitations by voice, etc.). The paper reports on distribution of paralinguistic elements, non-verbal interjections and hesitations in speech of different gender and age groups.

Typically, the task of authorship attribution has been solved using supervised machine learning methods. It is only recently that unsupervised methods have been applied to authorship attribution, namely author clustering. Clustering could be useful in realistic scenario as it represents natural grouping of documents without a priori authorship information, although the problem of feature selection remains unsolved. That is particularly true for a cross-domain scenario. Studies have shown that in cross-domain settings some domain-specific text features cause noise in authorship attribution. In the current work we introduce a modification of unmasking technique aimed at selecting and removing the features most influenced by topic change. We apply the proposed technique to identify topical features and assess the quality of author clustering with different feature sets in a real-world dataset of forum texts in Russian. The main assumption is that the topical features result in topic-based text instead authorship-based clustering, and removing them could increase the performance of document clustering against authorship ground truth. We test this consideration by first clustering cross-topic documents with state-of-the-art authorship attribution features. Second, we remove the most significant topical features, and cluster texts with resulting feature set. Both clustering results are evaluated against ground truth authorship. The results demonstrate that the described approach of removing some topical features increases author clustering performance, however one should be cautious with the number of removed features.

Recent demands in authorship attribution, specifically, cross-topic authorship attribution with small numbers of training samples and very short texts, impose new challenges on corpora design, feature and algorithm development. In the current work we address these challenges by performing authorship attribution on a specifically designed dataset in Russian. We present a dataset of short written texts in Russian, where both authorship and topic are controlled. We propose a pairwise classification design closely resembling a real-world forensic task. Semantic coherence features are introduced to supplement well-established n-gram features in challenging cross-topic settings. Distance-based measures are compared with machine learning algorithms. The experiment results support the intuition that for very small datasets, distance-based measures perform better than machine learning techniques. Moreover, pairwise classification results show that in difficult cross-topic cases, content-independent features, i.e., part-of-speech n-grams and semantic coherence, are promising. The results are supported by feature significance analysis for the proposed dataset.

Authorship attribution is an important field in online security. Recently there have been numerous successful works in authorship attribution in various European languages. Character n-grams are reported to be the best choice in authorship attribution, as they encode both style and content information. We evaluate different types of character n-gram features in an authorship attribution task in a real-world noisy dataset of Russian forum posts. We also supplement them with a number of new simple n-gram features capturing syntactic and discourse patterns. We perform authorship attribution in a single-topic and a cross-topic setting, as the research question is whether character n-grams capture both style and content information. Our results show that character n-grams are indeed very successful in Russian forum post authorship attribution. However, there is no clear distinction of style and content n-grams, as the same types of n-grams work well for both single-topic and cross-topic settings. In our experiments the generalized simple n-gram features which reveals syntactic and discourse patterns were proved to be also very important in authorship attribution of short informal Russian texts. They represent a different kind of authorship information and are a successful addition to the character n-grams in authorship attribution of forum texts in the Russian language.